Article published In:
Narrative Inquiry: Online-First ArticlesShifting discourses of togetherness and heroism in retold earthquake stories
This paper examines how disaster-related discourses are produced in storytelling, and whether and in what way
these discourses may change in the second telling. We examine two sets of retold stories taken from a corpus of 123 retold stories
about the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. Findings indicate that these storytellers tell structurally similar
stories, yet implement subtle linguistic changes which produce different positionings and discourses in the two tellings. We draw
on positioning analysis and the ethnomethodological concept of tellability to show how, in the first telling, the storytellers
orient to and produce discourses of united togetherness, whereas in the second telling they produce discourses of
bravery and heroism. We argue that the positioning and discursive strategies used in disaster stories may change
drastically over time, showing how retold stories of the same event change to meet the evolving realities of the teller and their
post-disaster community.
Keywords: narrative, positioning, discourses, disaster, tellability
Article outline
- Introduction
- Narrative analysis of retold stories
- Narrative positioning analysis
- Tellability
- Data and methods
- Percy’s story: Helping an old couple
- Percy’s story – stanzas B and BB
- Percy’s story – stanzas C and CC
- Percy’s story – stanzas D and DD
- Percy’s story – stanzas E and EE
- Lucinda’s “helping others” story
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas A and AA
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas B and BB
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas C and CC
- Lucinda’s story – stanzas D and DD
- Discussion: Discursive (PL-3) shifts in Percy’s and Lucinda’s stories from QB1 (2012) to QB2 (2019)
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
-
References
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